The Best Social Media Image Sizes For Photo Sharing On Every Major Social Network

If you’re a digital marketer and you’re helping to establish a brand presence or market a product or service, there’s a very good chance a lot of your effort is focused on building a social media presence.

You may be creating that presence by sharing articles from your clients owned properties or you might be creating unique content that is shared with a “social first” approach. Whatever the case may be, if you are including images in your social shares, optimizing those photos is crucial.

At Presto Mediawe spend a lot of time building social channels for our clients and we follow some simple social media image size dimension optimizations to ensure every channel looks its best.

We have included minimum and maximum image sizes and provided the aspect ratio used by each network so you can optimize your images that fall somewhere in-between the minimum and maximum size options. We’ve also included the largest image upload size allowed where available on each social media platform.

Here are the optimized image sizes for each of the major social networks – Pulled directly from each network’s own guidelines.

Facebook

Aspect Ratio: 1.91:1 (This is the aspect ratio used for desktop, mobile and sidebar ads)

Image Size: Up to 8MB

Pro Tip #1:Because Facebook offers several different image placements we recommend sticking to images of 1200 x 630pixels and the correct 1.91:1 aspect ratio. This will ensure the highest resolution across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.

Instagram

Optimal Image Size: 1080 x 1080 pixels

Minimum Image Size: 320 x 320 pixels

Aspect Ratio: Between 1.91:1 and 4:5

Pro Tip: When you share a photo that has a width between 320 and 1080 pixels, Instagram keeps that photo at its original resolution as long as the photo’s aspect ratio is between 1.91:1 and 4:5. If you share an aspect ratio that isn’t supported, your final product will be cropped to fit a supported ratio. Further, if you share a photo at a lower resolution it will be enlarged to fit a width of 320 pixels.

Pro Tip:When it doubt make your images larger and allow Twitter to scale them down based on the 2:1 aspect ratio. Just like Facebook, this will ensure that card sizes are displayed with the best quality possible.

LinkedIn

Optimal Image Size: 552 x 368 pixels

Minimum Image Size: 552 x 368 pixels

Aspect Ratio: 3:2

Image Size: 10 MB

Pro Tip:You can upload larger images for Linkedin but the preview will scale down to 552 x 368. If you don’t use a 3:2 aspect ratio the image will be cropped, possibly giving you a less than optimal final outcome.

Pro Tip #2: If you upload an image with a height of 368 pixels, LinkedIn will crop the sides. If you upload an image in square or portrait scale, LinkedIn will scale the width to 552 pixels and crop the bottom and top of the preview image.

Pinterest

Optimal Image Size: Minimum width of 600 pixels

Minimum Image Size: Width of 236 Pixels

Aspect Ratio: 2:3 to 1:3.5

Image Size: N/A

Pro Tip #1: It’s important to understand how pixel distribution works on Pinterest and why aspect ratio is crucial. There are several different areas where Pinterest displays your images. In the “feed” images have a width of 236 pixels with a maximum height of 800 pixels. If you click to expand an image it optns to a width of 564 pixels and the height scales accordingly.

Pro Tip #2: Pinterest recommends a minimum width of 600 pixels and an aspect ratio of 2:3 so every image will scale properly to the social networks output sizes across its feeds.

Google+

Optimal Image Size: 800 x 320

Minimum Image Size: 400 wide (will scale height proportionally)

Aspect Ratio: No wider than 5:2.

File Size: N/A

Pro Tip:Google+ is much like the Pinterest platform in that the company really works to scale images proportionally. Experts seem to agree that 800 x 320 pixels is the best size for these images. However, if you ensure an aspect ratio of no more than 5:2, you should notice a decent output.

If, like many people, you have a hard time figuring out aspect ratios, we have a simple tool for your use.

When you click “Calculate” you will find the optimal height for your social photo share:

Ultimately, optimizing image sharing sizes across all of your chosen social networks will help increase viewer engagement by providing the best possible quality in terms of resolution and cropping. It takes a little extra work to optimize these networks but in the end it will make all the difference in terms of engagement and overall reader satisfaction.